Tag: ‘sound design’
AMBIENT² interprets the sound landscape of Harakka island in Helsinki into music into another language through a computer-abled generative process. We are born into sound landscape to which we get used to through our lives and we take it as the familiar foundation, compared to which everything is strange and peculiar. It is about interpretation. When the same sound landscape is repeated as music something weird and unexpected is revealed.
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Music created by the AMBIENT² does not strive to fit its tones into any existing note system. It re-creates the frequencies of the source material by synthetic instruments as a spectral musical application. The final result is a musical work which never quite exactly repeats itself. The composer is the observed space which creates its own tonal system. The music thus created is not aleatory but determined by its own rules.
The basic form of the music is defined by ambient aesthetics, and in this case ambient sound creates the ambient music and the borders of music and the world are seamlessly intertwined.
The work was part of the La-Bas -biennale 2012 and it was presented at the sound art gallery Akusmata.
Recording, foley effects, mix and sound design for Anni, an indie feature film. The film was directed by Jussi Einola and produced by Joonas Einola.
Besides the film mix I also mixed and mastered the music and created a few original pieces using material from the composer (Simo Salo).
Anni uses samples and source material by Freesound.org contributors, who are listed below.
Teaser cut from the material I shooted at TaigaMetsä camp in july 2010. The camp was organized by Kaleva Youth Association to celebrate their 50th anniversary. I worked for them for a year as a media producer.
The related videos take you to a video series called TaigaStudio, which I also shot and edited.
The workshop was held for theaters’ staff and lasted two hours. The workshop was organized as a part of Teatterilaiva theater festival.
By lightly discussing about the general principles of sound design the attention was drawn to available technology and digital sound processing. Sounds and soundscapes were created by using generally available free software and sound libraries. The workshop provided to be a source of interesting ideas for coming shows.
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The Finnish Aviation Museum organized an exhibition about flight related myths and legends. The exhibition is called Myyttinen Lento or Mythical Flight in English. The exhibition was designed to spur imagination of kids (and adults). One of the objects of the exhibition was a magic carpet you could ride yourself.
For the design I co-operated with Marko Ahokangas from Dept. of Lighting and Sound Design of Theatre Academy of Finland. Marko created the sounds and I programmed the player. Plogue Bidule was used to create an ever changing and never repeating soundscape, which was fed to an eight channel PA-system, which encompassed the exhibition space.
The location of the sounds in space was controlled by four separate eight channel linear output selectors, which were modulated by independent sine wave oscillators. The sounds were divided in two categories – fast and slow sounds were panned and controlled by separate sub-programmes.
One layer of the soundscape was a synthesized wind like instrument, which picked its pitch (Via FFT) from the other sounds and acted as the musical element. For example when a sound of an airplane was playing and the synth was trigged the synth picked a frequency from the sound of the airplane and generated a musical tone that was in tune with the sound of the airplane.
Provided here is a two channel sample of the completed soundscape.
Muutos is a traditional Christian indie feature film, to which I took a part for some time. I was present at a couple of shootings as a recordist, created a couple of ambient atmospheres and designed the sound.
Volume automation was used to level the dynamics of the dialogue. The dialogue was to be clear and distinct. It’s not a realistic approach, but it serves the purpose of a focused message.
The music was mixed to specially support the dialogue. The soundfield has space in the middle, and the reverbs used are extra dark so that they don’t overlap too much with the voice frequencies.
I also was the recordist at some of the shootings, and cleaned the dialogue of the ready film from noises and disturbances.
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The show was produced by Blind Frame Productions. It was performed at the Solid Tricular LAN-party. The sci-fi inspired show used themes from Star Wars, Terminator and Transformers. The second half of the show was a lightsaber battle.
I checked out readily available material for the lightsaber sounds, but concluded that the available material didn’t sound evil enough and was inflexible for the show’s purpose, so I decided to create my own.
The lightsaber sound was created with Plogue Bidule. The fundamental waveform consists of PWM sawtooth and synced sawtooth waves. Envelope modulated PW creates the ignition effect. The waveform is put through and mixed with a couple of filterbanks, which add a bit of distortion too. The core of the sound is the fundamental waveform put through a customized and monophonic formant filter. In total the sound consists of three different layers.
The sound of movement is created by putting the original sound through a new set of filters, which mix with an amplitude modulated copy of themselves. An energy field rips through atmosphere. This second signal path is mixed to the original via a crossfader. The crossfader and a few other parameters were programmed to be controlled by the modulation wheel of a midi keyboard.
I originally envisioned to record the output of the process and replay it at the show. I ended up manipulating the process live with the midi keyboard, because it was much easier and I could better react to the action on stage. The contact sounds are adjustments of the original process, and they were launched with the keyboard. Besides the lightsabers a multitude of other sounds were created for the show.
The sound is not supposed to be an emulation of the original, but a unique rendering for a unique purpose. It sounded awesome through the party’s PA.
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Talvisoolo (Winter solo) was composed for an acrobatic fire performer (a member of Trio Taika). The track was created in co-operation with Visa Oscar. The world freezes and thaws in a dialogue with a fiery soul.
A lot of icy material was employed as rhythms, ambiences and melodies. Some of it was retrieved from the Live Antarctic Stream of AWI.
The track uses samples from following Freesound contributors: Black_Boe, c97059890, Corsica_S, deer, Dynamicell, gelo_papas, laurent, scarbelly25 and soalicesays
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Ääniviidakko (Jungle of Sound) is a generative and synthetic rainforest/jungle soundscape installation. It was created for the chill out space of Manaus techno party, held in Helsinki. It was not possible to sonically separate the chill out space very well from the main stage, and it would have been futile to have a DJ there.
The totality consists of eight separate layers, which are in constant tranformation and rhythmically independend of each other. No natural sounds have been used as the source. A few irrelevant rhythmical and melodious elements are driven through a multitude of effects, which create a jungle-like soundscape, which never repeats itself.
The cycles are quite long, and the soundscape goes through impressions of night and day, relaxation and activity. On top of that stochastic midi generators drive a few software synthesizers, which simulate wind and water-like noises.
A collage of real jungle and rainforest sounds is used as a secondary source to liven up the synthetic main composition. These are mainly birds, which at times rise up to be heard.
Realized with Plogue Bidule
Exhibitions:
2008 Manaus party chill out area, Helsinki